Lab specimens of
anthrax spores, Ebola virus and other pathogens disappeared from the Army's
biological warfare research facility in the early 1990s, during a turbulent
period of labor complaints and recriminations among rival scientists there,
documents from an internal Army inquiry show.

The 1992 inquiry also found evidence that someone was secretly entering a lab
late at night to conduct unauthorized research, apparently involving anthrax. A
numerical counter on a piece of lab equipment had been rolled back to hide work
done by the mystery researcher, who left the misspelled label "antrax" in the
machine's electronic memory, according to the documents obtained by The
Courant.

Experts disagree on
whether the lost specimens pose a danger. An Army spokesperson said they do not
because they would have been effectively killed by chemicals in preparation for
microscopic study. A prominent molecular biologist said, however, that resilient
anthrax spores could possibly be retrieved from a treated specimen.

In addition, a
scientist who once worked at the Army facility said that because of poor
inventory controls, it is possible some of the specimens disappeared while still
viable, before being treated.

Not in dispute is what
the incidents say about disorganization and lack of security in some quarters of
the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases - known as
USAMRIID - at Fort Detrick, Md., in the 1990s. Fort Detrick is believed to be
the original source of the Ames strain of anthrax used in the mail attacks last
fall, and investigators have questioned people there and at a handful of other
government labs and contractors.

It is unclear whether
Ames was among the strains of anthrax in the 27 sets of specimens reported
missing at Fort Detrick after an inventory in 1992. The Army spokesperson, Caree
Vander-Linden, said that at least some of the lost anthrax was not Ames. But a
former lab technician who worked with some of the anthrax that was later
reported missing said all he ever handled was the Ames strain.

Meanwhile, one of the
27 sets of specimens has been found and is still in the lab; an Army
spokesperson said it may have been in use when the inventory was taken. The fate
of the rest, some containing samples no larger than a pencil point, remains
unclear. In addition to anthrax and Ebola, the specimens included hanta virus,
simian AIDS virus and two that were labeled "unknown" - an Army euphemism for
classified research whose subject was secret.

A former commander of
the lab said in an interview he did not believe any of the missing specimens
were ever found. Vander-Linden said last week that in addition to the one
complete specimen set, some samples from several others were later located, but
she could not provide a fuller accounting because of incomplete records
regarding the disposal of specimens.

"In January of 2002,
it's hard to say how many of those were missing in February of 1991," said
Vander-Linden, adding that it's likely some were simply thrown out with the
trash.

Discoveries of lost
specimens and unauthorized research coincided with an Army inquiry into
allegations of "improper conduct" at Fort Detrick's experimental pathology
branch in 1992. The inquiry did not substantiate the specific charges of
mismanagement by a handful of officers.

But a review of
hundreds of pages of interview transcripts, signed statements and internal memos
related to the inquiry portrays a climate charged with bitter personal rivalries
over credit for research, as well as allegations of sexual and ethnic
harassment. The recriminations and unhappiness ultimately became a factor in the
departures of at least five frustrated Fort Detrick scientists.

In interviews with
The Courant last month, two of the former scientists said that as recently
as 1997, when they left, controls at Fort Detrick were so lax it wouldn't have
been hard for someone with security clearance for its handful of labs to smuggle
out biological specimens.

Lost Samples

The 27 specimens were
reported missing in February 1992, after a new officer, Lt. Col. Michael
Langford, took command of what was viewed by Fort Detrick brass as a
dysfunctional pathology lab. Langford, who no longer works at Fort Detrick, said
he ordered an inventory after he recognized there was "little or no
organization" and "little or no accountability" in the lab.

"I knew we had to
basically tighten up what I thought was a very lax and unorganized system," he
said in an interview last week.

A factor in Langford's
decision to order an inventory was his suspicion - never proven - that someone
in the lab had been tampering with records of specimens to conceal unauthorized
research. As he explained later to Army investigators, he asked a lab
technician, Charles Brown, to "make a list of everything that was missing."

"It turned out that
there was quite a bit of stuff that was unaccounted for, which only verifies
that there needs to be some kind of accountability down there," Langford told
investigators, according to a transcript of his April 1992 interview.

Brown - whose inventory
was limited to specimens logged into the lab during the 1991 calendar year -
detailed his findings in a two-page memo to Langford, in which he lamented the
loss of the items "due to their immediate and future value to the pathology
division and USAMRIID."

Many of the specimens
were tiny samples of tissue taken from the dead bodies of lab animals infected
with deadly diseases during vaccine research. Standard procedure for the
pathology lab would be to soak the samples in a formaldehyde-like fixative and
embed them in a hard resin or paraffin, in preparation for study under an
electron microscope.

Some samples,
particularly viruses, are also irradiated with gamma rays before they are
handled by the pathology lab.

Whether all of the lost
samples went through this treatment process is unclear. Vander-Linden said the
samples had to have been rendered inert if they were being worked on in the
pathology lab.

But Dr. Ayaad Assaad, a
former Fort Detrick scientist who had extensive dealings with the lab, said that
because some samples were received at the lab while still alive - with the
expectation they would be treated before being worked on - it is possible some
became missing before treatment. A phony "log slip" could then have been entered
into the lab computer, making it appear they had been processed and logged.

In fact, Army
investigators appear to have wondered if some of the anthrax specimens reported
missing had ever really been logged in. When an investigator produced a log slip
and asked Langford if "these exist or [are they] just made up on a data entry
form," Langford replied that he didn't know.

Assuming a specimen was
chemically treated and embedded for microscopic study, Vander-Linden and several
scientists interviewed said it would be impossible to recover a viable pathogen
from them. Brown, who did the inventory for Langford and has since left Fort
Detrick, said in an interview that the specimens he worked on in the lab "were
completely inert."

"You could spread them
on a sandwich," he said.

But Dr. Barbara Hatch
Rosenberg, a molecular biologist at the State University of New York who is
investigating the recent anthrax attacks for the Federation of American
Scientists, said she would not rule out the possibility that anthrax in spore
form could survive the chemical-fixative process.

"You'd have to grind it
up and hope that some of the spores survived," Rosenberg said. "It would be a
mess."

"It seems to me that it
would be an unnecessarily difficult task. Anybody who had access to those labs
could probably get something more useful."

Rosenberg's analysis of
the anthrax attacks, which has been widely reported, concludes that the culprit
is probably a government insider, possibly someone from Fort Detrick. The Army
facility manufactured anthrax before biological weapons were banned in 1969, and
it has experimented with the Ames strain for defensive research since the early
1980s.

Vander-Linden said that
one of the two sets of anthrax specimens listed as missing at Fort Detrick was
the Vollum strain, which was used in the early days of the U.S. biological
weapons program. It was not clear what the type of anthrax in the other missing
specimen was.

Eric Oldenberg, a
soldier and pathology lab technician who left Fort Detrick and is now a police
detective in Phoenix, said in an interview that Ames was the only anthrax strain
he worked with in the lab.

Late-Night Research

More troubling to
Langford than the missing specimens was what investigators called
"surreptitious" work being done in the pathology lab late at night and on
weekends.

Dr. Mary Beth Downs
told investigators that she had come to work several times in January and
February of 1992 to find that someone had been in the lab at odd hours, clumsily
using the sophisticated electron microscope to conduct some kind of
off-the-books research.

After one weekend in
February, Downs discovered that someone had been in the lab using the microscope
to take photos of slides, and apparently had forgotten to reset a feature on the
microscope that imprints each photo with a label. After taking a few pictures of
her own slides that morning, Downs was surprised to see "Antrax 005" emblazoned
on her negatives.

Downs also noted that
an automatic counter on the camera, like an odometer on a car, had been rolled
back to hide the fact that pictures had been taken over the weekend. She wrote
of her findings in a memo to Langford, noting that whoever was using the
microscope was "either in a big hurry or didn't know what they were doing."

It is unclear if the
Army ever got to the bottom of the incident, and some lab insiders believed
concerns about it were overblown. Brown said many Army officers did not
understand the scientific process, which he said doesn't always follow a 9-to-5
schedule.

"People all over the
base knew that they could come in at anytime and get on the microscope," Brown
said. "If you had security clearance, the guard isn't going to ask you if you
are qualified to use the equipment. I'm sure people used it often without our
knowledge."

Documents from the
inquiry show that one unauthorized person who was observed entering the lab
building at night was Langford's predecessor, Lt. Col. Philip Zack, who at the
time no longer worked at Fort Detrick. A surveillance camera recorded Zack being
let in at 8:40 p.m. on Jan. 23, 1992, apparently by Dr. Marian Rippy, a lab
pathologist and close friend of Zack's, according to a report filed by a
security guard.

Zack could not be
reached for comment. In an interview this week, Rippy said that she doesn't
remember letting Zack in, but that he occasionally stopped by after he was
transferred off the base.

"After he left, he had
no [authorized] access to the building. Other people let him in," she said. "He
knew a lot of people there and he was still part of the military. I can tell
you, there was no suspicious stuff going on there with specimens."

Zack left Fort Detrick
in December 1991, after a controversy over allegations of unprofessional
behavior by Zack, Rippy, Brown and others who worked in the pathology division.
They had formed a clique that was accused of harassing the Egyptian-born Assaad,
who later sued the Army, claiming discrimination.

Assaad said he had
believed the harassment was behind him until last October, until after the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks.

He said that is when
the FBI contacted him, saying someone had mailed an anonymous letter - a few
days before the existence of anthrax-laced mail became known - naming Assaad as
a potential bioterrorist. FBI agents decided the note was a hoax after
interviewing Assaad.

But Assaad said he
believes the note's timing makes the author a suspect in the anthrax attacks,
and he is convinced that details of his work contained in the letter mean the
author must be a former Fort Detrick colleague.

Brown said that he
doesn't know who sent the letter, but that Assaad's nationality and expertise in
biological agents made him an obvious subject of concern after Sept. 11.